Today is nineteenth-century philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer's birthday. I enjoyed his little book, Studies in Pessimism, which I can easily summarize: Life sucks.
Schopenhauer, for instance, disdained the ontological truth that evil is a mere privation of goodness. Said Arthur, "It is the good which is negative; in other words, happiness and satisfaction always imply some desire fulfilled, some state of pain brought to an end."
All created things are not good, said Schopenhauer. Rather, all things are bad. Good is the privation of evil.
It's clever stuff and, for an atheist like Schopenhauer, dead-on correct. But once you admit the existence of a good God who creates all things, this pessimistic foundation is crushed. If you're going to be an atheist, though, you might as well be an honest one like Schopenhauer. Epicurean-like atheists have fun, but only because they don't think about existence as intensely as Schopenhauer did.
